In a little while a low voice called:
“Bronson!”
“Bronson!” thought Jim. “I must remember that name!”
The man turned and walked quickly back to the house, and the two talked in a tone so low that not a syllable reached Jim.
At the risk of discovery he must hear more, and crept up to the house. There was a tiny porch before the door and under this the two men were standing.
“I will sleep in the passage,” said the deep-throated Villa. “You can take the other room if you like.”
“Not me,” said the man called Bronson. “I’d rather stand by the machine all night. I don’t want to sleep anyway.”
“What machine?” wondered Jim. “Was there another motorcar here?”
“Will the boss get there tonight?” asked Villa.
“I can’t tell you, Mr. Villa,” replied Bronson. “He might not, of course, but if there are no obstacles he’ll be at the Hall before daybreak. It is not a very good road.”
At the Hall! In a flash it dawned upon Jim. Kennett Hall! The pile of buildings which Mrs. Weatherwale had pointed out to him as the onetime ancestral home of the Dantons. What a fool he had been not to remember that place when they were discussing the possible shelters that Digby Groat might use!
Both Villa and Bronson were smoking now and the fragrance of the former man’s cigar came to the envious Jim.
“She won’t give any trouble, will she, Mr. Villa?” asked Bronson.
“Trouble?” Villa laughed. “Not she. She’ll be frightened to death. I don’t suppose she’s ever been in an aeroplane before.”
So that was the machine. Jim’s eyes danced. An aeroplane … where? He strained his eyes to beyond the house, but it was too dark to distinguish anything.
“Nothing funny will happen to that machine of yours in the rain?”
“Oh no,” said Bronson. “I have put the sheet over the engines. I have frequently kept her out all night.”
Then you’re a bad man, thought Jim, to whom an aeroplane was a living, palpitating thing. So Eunice was there and they were going to take her by aeroplane somewhere. What should he do? There was time for him to go back to Rugby and inform the police, but—
“Where is Fuentes?” asked Bronson. “Mr. G. said he would be here.”
“He’s along the Rugby Road,” replied Villa. “I gave him a signal pistol to let us know in case they send a police-car after us. If you aren’t going to bed, Bronson, I will, and you can wait out here and keep your eye open for any danger.”
Fuentes was in it, too, and his plan to get back to Rugby would not work. Nevertheless, the watchful Fuentes had allowed Jim to pass, though it was likely that he was nearer to Rugby than the place where he had come out on to the road. They might not get the girl away on the machine in the darkness, but who knows what orders Digby Groat had left for her disposal in case a rescue was attempted? He decided to wait near, hoping against hope that a policeman cyclist would pass.
Villa struck a match to start a new cigar and in its light Jim had a momentary glimpse of the two men. Bronson was in regulation air-kit. A leather coat reached to his hips, his legs were encased in leather breeches and top-boots. He was about his height, Jim thought, as an idea took shape in his mind. What an end to that adventure! Jim came as near to being excited as ever he had been in his life.
Presently Villa yawned.
“I’m going to lie down in the passage, and if that dame comes out, she’s going to have a shock,” he said. “Good night. Wake me at half-past four.”
Bronson grunted something and continued his perambulations up and down the road. Ten minutes passed, a quarter of an hour, half an hour, and the only sound was the dripping of the rain from the trees, and the distant clatter and rumble of the trains as they passed through Rugby.
To the north were the white lights of the railway sidings and workshops; to the west, the faint glow in the sky marked the position of a town. Jim pulled his useless pistol from his pocket and stepped on to the roadway, crouching down, so that when he did rise, he seemed to the astonished Bronson to have sprung out of the ground. Something cold and hard was pushed under the spy’s nose.
“If you make a sound, you son of a thief!” said Jim, “I’ll blow your face off! Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” muttered the man, shivering with fright.
Jim’s left hand gripped his collar. The automatic pistol under his nose was all too obvious, and Felix Bronson, a fearful man for whom the air alone had no terror, was cowed and beaten.
“Where is the bus?” asked Jim in a whisper.
“In the field behind the house,” the man answered in the same tone. “What are you going to do? Who are you? How did you get past—”
“Don’t ask so many questions,” said Jim; “lead the way—not that way,” as the man turned to pass the house.
“I shall have to climb the fence if I don’t go that way,” said Bronson sullenly.
“Then climb it,” said Jim, “it will do you good, you lazy devil!”
They walked across the field, and presently Jim saw a graceful outline against the dark sky.
“Now take off your clothes,” he said peremptorily.
“What do you mean?” demanded the startled Bronson. “I can’t undress here!”
“I’m sorry to shock your modesty, but that is just what you are going to do,” said Jim; “and it will be easier to undress you alive than to undress you dead, as I know from my sorrowful experience in France.”
Reluctantly Bronson stripped his leather coat.
“Don’t drop it on the grass,” said
